06 November 2012

New York City: Days 3 & 4

Okay here is the next two days of our New York trip!

Day 3: Today we started the day by going to Tom's Restaurant in Brooklyn. It was sooo good! Small family-type owned restaurants is something I don't get much of living in San Diego. I got apple cinnamon pancakes and boy were they fantastic! They had cinnamon butter (and peach butter and strawberry butter) to spread on top too. To die for!

Then we got on the subway and rode it to Battery Park. We picked up the Downtown tour bus so we could see that part of Manhattan. The first guide we had was super dull but she did give us a good tip. We thought the half price Broadway tickets were only available in a couple places, but she told us there was another ticket office right in front of one of the stops at South Street Seaport. We got off and T-Bone got in line and I walked around the corner to see the Bodies Exhibit. It was something I've been wanting to see since I heard that it came to San Diego a couple years ago. It was really worth it. T-Bone had no desire to go with me so I walked around at my own pace and it was fascinating. I love science and the body so to see it so defined was beautiful. I found myself so much more acutely aware of my body, especially my breathing and heartbeat.

Spencer was second in the ticket line so when I was done with the Bodies we got tickets for Phantom of the Opera and got on the bus. This time we had the best tour guide! He was Italian and such an amazing accent. We kept wondering if it was just for show, but even if it was it made the tour so enjoyable! It was so great to take the Downtown tour because we saw so much more than we would have otherwise. We roude around on the bus through China town and Little Italy. We got off at SoHo and Chelsea to eat at Joe's Pizza. Super good! Then we walked over to the High Line and walked along that. It was really cool, but we were so tired of walking by the time we got there that we didn't walk too far on it. We got back on the tour bus and just rode it around until the tour was finished.

Top Row: The guy in the red shirt was our Italian tour guide. Cool shot of the Empire State Building, our reflection on the bus in a building.
Bottom Row: Somewhere in china town, our pancakes from Tom's, Us on the tour bus.

After that we rode the subway up to a yarn store I wanted to shop at. I got the most gorgeous yarn but can't decide what to make with it. I will though. We had a little time so we walked through the MoMa for 45 minutes until it closed. After that we were trying to kill time so we found a deli and ate dinner (Digby's) and then walked around 30 Rockefeller Center a little. When it was time we headed over to the Phantom of the Opera theater. The tickets we got were the second row from the stage and we were so close we could look over and see the orchestra in the pit! The show was great and it was fantastic to see it so close. I have seen Phantom, but it's been like 20 years and T-Bone has never seen it so we really enjoyed ourselves!

One last thing to mention about this day is we took the subway SO many times and I have never walked up and down so many stairs in my life! Some of those tracks are 6 stories down and then you have to walk back up once you get off the train! After the show we headed home and crashed. It was a full day!

Top Row: 30 Rock, the New York Public Library (which we meant to go in but forgot to), our seats in the Majestic Theater for Phantom.
Bottom: Bottom of the Empire State Building, Times Square New Years Eve ball, Joe's Pizza (really was New York's best!)

Day 4: Today was my birthday! We got up and spend the day walking around lower Manhattan. We walked around Wall Street (but got a little lost somehow finding it) saw the NYSE, the finra building (the regulating authority for T-Bone's occupation), the place where George Washington was sworn in as the first president and the 9/11 Memorial. The memorial was not as moving as I was anticipating. It was beautiful, but the waterfalls were so loud. I found it kind of distracting to think about what happened with the loud water! I did get emotional looking at some of the names and thinking about their lives though--especially when I saw a couple of names where it said "a woman and her unborn child." It's so sad to think about what was taken from the people who were not in that building. They are building a museum and I was bummed it wasn't done. In the little Visitor's Center they had a video and some recovered items and that little bit moved me more than the waterfalls.

After the Memorial we rode the train uptown and got on a boat tour to the Statue of Liberty. They have it closed to go inside so we figured just taking a boat around would be good enough. It was and we got some good pictures. I just wish we had done Ellis Island also. Next time. After the boat let us off we were walking back to the train so we could find a restaurant to eat dinner but we stopped to eat at a pie store which lured us in with its intoxicating smell. Then we were heading back to the train again but had to stop again when we walked by this delicious sandwich and pizza place! T-Bone loved the pizza here and our sandwiches were pretty good too.

Full of food we headed down to Brooklyn because we wanted to rent bikes to ride across the Brooklyn Bridge. When we got there the dude working was singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley while it was playing on his phone. When the song was over he played it again and I asked him if we just got RickRoll'D. He laughed and said he had been waiting all day for someone to ask him that! It was pretty hilarious! We tipped him just for being awesome and we got "Best customers of the day." So we got our bikes and rode over the bridge. It wasn't as hard as we were expecting; on the contrary it was rather easy and refreshing! It was really gorgeous to see the city from that vantage point too. After crossing the bridge we kept riding and rode around Battery Park. That was a gorgeous part of the city that we probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. We turned our bikes in at Battery Park and then headed up to the United Nations. It was the week of the Summit so the roads were closed but we could walk up there--just not too close. T-Bone was hoping he could see some protestors. We talked to some funny cops trying to find our way around the barricades. When we finally got as close as we could we saw a group of middle easterners in a blocked off area. (It was their designated area) We asked the cops what they were doing and one of them said, "Every so often they yell in another langage that we can't understand." Then another one said, "Actually they are singing Happy Birthday to me because it's my birthday." I said it was my birthday too and he gave me a hug and took a picture with me. It was awesome! I don't know if it really was his birthday but it makes a fun story! After that we went home because we were exhausted and had an early morning on Friday. We were so full from our earlier eatings we didn't even get to go to a fancy restaurant to celebrate my birthday. But the rest of the day made up for it!

Top Row: New York skyline from the boat, us with the Statue of Liberty, the Charging Bull, me and my bike on the Brooklyn Bridge. Next Row: Us at the 9/11 Memorial, me and the NYC cop who I might share a birthday with, and T-Bone at finra. Bottom Row: Me at the Federal Reserve and below that eating a street hot dog, the George Washington Memorial, us on the Brooklyn Bridge and T-Bone at the NYSE.